


Call the Spirits

by LadyBraken



Series: Terrorfest- Halloween 2019 [8]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Fantastic, Hickey is His Own Warning, Other, innacurate use of shamanic powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 04:10:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21237938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyBraken/pseuds/LadyBraken
Summary: Armitage and Hartnell had went with the girl.Hickey didn’t quite know why he had stayed behind. There was something strange here.Something… fascinating.





	Call the Spirits

Armitage and Hartnell had went with the girl. 

Hickey didn’t quite know why he had stayed behind. There was something strange here. Something…  _ fascinating. _

Hickey had connected the dots. Not all of them, of course. Some. Enough.

The beast had attacked after the girl’s father had been killed. It continued for as long as she was in the ship. It  _ hunted _ the men. Were they to get off of the ship, they would be slaughtered. In the wolf’s mouth - bear’s, as it were. 

He had seen what the girl was doing. Holding her hand out to the beast - both silent, both motionless. Almost unafraid. 

Then she had started to… sing.

Oh, Hickey knew what was happening. He knew it alright.

_ Witch _ .

He had planned to get her, take her back to the ship. The men would have hang her - or burn her at the stake, or do something else - who cared - and he would be praised for it. Perhaps he would even have climbed the social ladder. 

But then, when the girl had stopped singing, when the boys had gripped her arms, Hickey had felt something else.

Witches sang to spirits, didn’t they? Demons, ghosts, the like. Stronger things. Stronger than men. 

What would it be to control such a thing?

How would it feel to hold that power?

So Hickey stayed.  _ To collect clues _ , he had said. To observe and learn, he had meant. To steal the girl’s place. To steal her job. Her name too perhaps. 

Hickey put his shoulder back like he had seen her do. He tilted his head towards the stars and he let the cold, rushing wing slap him like he didn’t feel it. He rose his hands. 

_ Mimic _ . 

Hickey was a pragmatic man. A non-believer of anything that didn’t fit. 

But this place was haunted. Of that, he had proof. That, he felt, deep, deep in his bones. The screams of the winds, unnatural like the cracks of a factory, like the wild minds of drunken fools. Angry, angry chaos. Roaring like the bear. It wasn’t a bear. Not really. It was a… a weapon. 

It was the top of the local foodchain, and Hickey was used to aim for the top. 

Hickey opened his mouth and tried to emulate the strange noises the girl was singing. Surely this wasn’t a language. He whispered them, mimicking everything to the rhythm like a song, like an accent - the highs and lows, the way a breath got out of his lugs to feed the hungry wind.

Hickey, too, was hungry. He was born hungry. 

And so, Hickey sang, and sang, and sang. He would give to Hartnell the glory of taking the girl He would take the glory of mastering her craft. She was a savage. Surely, it shouldn’t be difficult. 

There was someone in front of him. Small, hands in the pockets in a way Hicke knew too much.  _ He knew _ . Even there - colorless, hidden by the blizzard, hidden by the night. 

“You’re dead.” he wanted to say - or perhaps he said it. The silhouette didn’t answered. “You are forgotten. I slithered under your skin - I took your life, your money, your clothes. Then I took your name, your manners, your place - and no one saw the difference. No one noticed. That’s how unimportant you were. I am important. I am you, now.”

He didn’t know why he talked. Why he talked to a shadow - to the shadow of the dead - to the shadow of no one, but he did. He regretted it immediately. It was like each words gave the silhouette more power - filling it with reality. Filling it with Hickey’s breath just like Hickey had fed on his victim’s. 

The snow crunched under his feet, and there was someone else. A woman, tall, hair short like many of her condition. His mother? No, that was even more improbable. If ghosts were real - that was a possibility, after all- his mother couldn’t be angry at him for killing her. Truely, it had been mercy. 

Hickey opened his mouth to talk, but his mouth shifted all wrong. His breath escaped his lungs with sounds he never meant to make. His tongue move in ways he’d never learned. His mouth sang without him. His chest spasmed in the effort, his cheeks burned with the cold. 

His mouth sang, and sang, and sang to the crowd in front of him. 

When his mouth stopped singing, it was because there was no breath left in his lungs. 


End file.
